"Raw"

On Saturday I went to a cooking class. Nothing surprising there for those of you who know me. You know I love my ‘food porn’ – whether it’s magazines, TV shows, movies or live sessions. I saw the class at vegetarian fine dining restaurant Magnolia advertised on the web and decided straight away to sign up. After this class there was only one more before the restaurant closed for a couple of months. I emailed chef Gabriele Kurz, and got an email in response confirming my place.

At the appointed time I walked through the heat and arrived at Magnolia. I was greeted with some herb water, one of the restaurant’s specialities, and a moist cloth to wipe away the stains of Dubai’s heat. Chef Gaby came across to greet me, and dropped the biggest surprise of the day on me. I had thought we were going to be cooking. “Well, not so much cooking’ she said. “Today’s food is raw.”

Raw. As in uncooked. As in raw vegetarian. As in salad ... and fanatics. I know people who eat ‘raw’ food. They are seriously obsessed by what they eat.
So I looked at the menu list:
• Avocado Basil Emulsion (difficult to ruin those flavours)
• Iced almond milk (can’t comment on this one)
• Watermelon tomato salad (another one it would be tough to ruin)
• Raw Vegetable Lasagne (hmm. How is it a lasagne without pasta and cheese? Not sure about this)
• Herb Water (tasted these before and they’re great)

So there was nothing that sounded too bad and a few things that sounded very good indeed.

First up Chef Gaby prepared the tomatoes for tomato puree and tomato water. The tomato water would be used to flavour the avocado emulsion (this was sounding better and better) and the puree would be formed into a quenelle and place on the emulsion to serve. The interesting point was pureeing the tomatoes so finely to make the tomato water (I’d only ever chopped them roughly before) and adding some white balsamic vinegar for flavour. The tomato puree can be frozen and added to tomato water for a refreshing drink. Could be interesting to add a touch of vodka for a pale bloody mary.

Next up were ‘pralines’ – home made marzipan which was used to stuff dates and dried apricots. Then decorated with coconut and pistachios. The marzipan was sweetened with agave syrup and flavoured with ginger and lemon. I personally would omit the ginger in future, but that’s a personal taste. The ‘pralines’ were delicious. A bit fiddley but they looked impressive. Great for a dinner party finale.

The tomato and watermelon salad opened my eyes, taste buds and other senses to some new ideas. It hadn’t ever occurred to me before to chop up snow peas into tiny pieces. The joy of this approach was that my brain didn’t know what it was getting spoonfuls of before it tasted the food. There’s something interesting in mixed mouthfuls of tomatoes and watermelon.

When it came to the ‘lasagne’ it looked lovely, the tapenade that joined the layers was delicious but, for me, in the end it was a plate of raw vegetables sliced up thinly and layered. Sorry. I need the cheese, and the pasta. But if you’re being exceptionally healthy, want to add a variety of veggies to your diet, and have loads of time, this is a lovely main course.

This was my first consciously completely ‘raw’ meal and I did enjoy it. Do I want to eat ‘raw’ all the time? No. But a ‘raw’ day each week is a great idea, especially if you are wanting to raise the amount and variety of vegetables that you eat. It wasn’t quite the cooking class I expected, but it challenged me in ways that other classes have not.